In a speech delivered on the floor of the US House of Representatives, Rep. Phil Gringrey (R-GA) insulted American women, LGBT, and single parents by claiming that America should return to traditional values by mandating that boys and girls take classes on traditional gender roles in a marriage because there are some things fathers do “maybe a little bit different” than mothers.

“You know, maybe part of the problem is we need to go back into the schools at a very early age, maybe at the grade school level, and have a class for the young girls and have a class for the young boys and say, you know, this is what’s important,” Gingrey said in a speech supporting the Defense of Marriage Act. He went on,

“This is what a father does that is maybe a little different, maybe a little bit better than the talents that a mom has in a certain area. And the same thing for the young girls, that, you know, this is what a mom does, and this is what is important from the standpoint of that union which we call marriage.”

While earlier in the speech he did acknowledge that the “Father Knows Best” adage he subscribed to “back in the old days of television” is antiquated, he also found time to insinuate that single American parents and LGBT couples cannot handle the “responsibility” of parenting.

“Of my three daughters and one daughter-in-law, they all work,” he said. “They all work, some of them full-time, some of them part-time. But they’re still there as moms. And when they come home and take over that responsibility, they need a shared partner, and that partner is that partner for life. And I’m talking about, of course, the father.”

Incredibly, this man is the leading Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia. Apparently, he hasn’t heard of the troves of recent research suggesting that American youth that grow up in LGBT and single-parent homes do just fine.

Of course, we all know exactly what he is implying: That same-sex couples cannot provide children with the same wholesome and nurturing environment that a mother and father can.

This is precisely the kind of bigoted thinking that relegates LGBT Americans to second-class citizenship and harms the general welfare of them and their families.

The Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling in the coming days on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents same-sex couples from receiving the same federal benefits that are enjoyed by married straight couples.

Americans Against The Tea Party is a group committed to exposing the Tea Party’s lies, violence, racism, ignorance, intolerance, bigotry, and corporatist fascist efforts to subvert our democratic process – and we are organizing to defeat Tea Party/GOP candidates on ballots everywhere.